


Exothermal

by Viori (nihilists)



Category: Gackt (Musician) - Fandom, Hyde (Musician) - Fandom, L'Arc~en~Ciel, VAMPS (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:23:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilists/pseuds/Viori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cracking an egg takes more than just the application of force, Faberge or no. I honestly didn't expect to ever write anything around this pairing. POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exothermal

  
  


Exothermal  
by Viori

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Don't get too close to him," he'd told me, laughing, but it had been dry like dead leaves underfoot. Leaves that gave no comfort when one thought of the close onset of winter.  _He's being dramatic again,_  I had thought to myself as I closed my cell phone, the conversation over. Everything was always a production.  
  
"You seem to be skipping from thing to thing," he'd continued on the next day as we shared a smoke, surveying the concrete skyline that held no beauty on frigid autumn mornings like that one. "Moreso than most."  
  
"I'm not, I'm just taking everything I want all at once." Nothing was being left behind, I was sure of that. I smiled at him like I was eating shit and loving it. It all tasted like sugar candies. I could gobble the world. "I'm young and vivacious, don't you remember saying that?"  
  
Gackt straightened his spine from where he'd leaned it against the glass door of the studio. I didn't know why he was there with me; he'd given up cigarettes forever ago. But there he was with one burning away between his lips as his mouth dripped acrid words disguised in hospitality. I'd dropped the bomb on him a week ago, but it still came up in these bites of conversation. I had joined yet another project. It was uncharacteristic of him to linger on a topic that had little to nothing to do with his own business.  
  
"Maybe, maybe not."  
  
"Hyde's calling the band VAMPS."  
  
"Can it really be called a band? It's him, it's nothing but."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
There were things. The round body of an acoustic guitar, held by hands so small yet strong. String-strumming, curls of smoke fogging up the room. Tables were scattered with battered sheets of paper scribbled with words of abandonment. Chokes of laughter from time to time. Kaz never said a whole lot, but I never cared. As a matter of fact, no one ever said too much until the alcohol started flowing, until hollow glass pipes colored with hues of eggplant and cobalt were stuffed full of greenery and set ablaze. I can be comfortable anywhere, anytime, with anyone. It is a strength of mine.  
  
Crudely, once, his eyes finely hazed with the cruise of the high, Hyde had asked me whether or not Tsuchiya Anna was every bit the woman he'd heard she was in the sack. Kaz had laughed, lighting the bowl for another inhale of pepper-sweet smoke, and I'd smiled acidly at Hyde before answering.  
  
"How should I know? You won't ever, either."  
  
"That's why I like you, Ju-ken, I can't bully you about."  
  
"I like you, too, so don't be an asshole."  
  
I took the pipe from Kaz, who was reclining next to Hyde on the worn sofa the studio provided, watching as if fascinated by the blades of the ceiling fan cutting the air. Hyde had his head cocked to look at me, eyes studious. There are games children play, testing the limits of the adults around them, but sometimes grown-ups do just the same. Such a cool collected algorithm, Hyde was. Was there anything special about that? Not in this business. Was I impressed by him? I wasn't sure. I knew Gackt had been. He'd snatched him up for that movie, whatever it was called, which I'd never seen. Even before VAMPS, before Kaz had extended his invitation to me, his name was one I'd heard drop off of my boss's lips many times before. Kaz seemed, to me, to hold Hyde in the same regard that I did; with a mild but infectious curiosity. The same curiosity that made you want to take something apart just to see the way it would unwind.  
  
"Introduce me sometime? A friend of yours is a friend of mine." Hyde's foot was tapping on the floor; he could barely reach it with the point of his boot from where he sat, somewhat sprawled, as if trying to take up twice as much space as his minute frame allowed.  
  
"Sure thing."  
  
He didn't mention Anna again after that. Neither did I.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
I love to dance. I only ever saw him do it onstage, when he held the neck of a guitar in his left hand, the heavy bulk of it braced against his hips as if to hide the sinful movement he made with them. We did so much drinking on tour I thought my spinal fluid would run permanently dry. I remember wondering for a long time why Kaz wore so much liner around eyes so aged and haunted. I didn't care that he did, I just  _wondered_.  
  
This time the paraphernalia was strewn over the table in my tiny dining room, low music playing throughout the apartment. I can never be without music in my head and around my body. Kaz was sitting with his back braced against the leg of the table, the air around his bandana weighted down with smoke. There was a dopey smile on his face that had everything to do with the empty plastic bag laying on the carpet, which we'd all contributed in the depletion of its once bountiful contents. I was dancing, dancing like I sometimes do when my bass is braced over the tops of my thighs and the beat I pluck away becomes a part of my limbs and my loins and everything runs fluid. Much better than a high, much better than the steamy rise of drunkenness. I know that I almost never stop moving, and dancing is just a better way to move. So why not? Why not, when the grass was potent as fuck that night, and Hyde was sitting on my dining room table laughing and smiling and watching me as if it was the most amazing fucking thing he'd ever seen.  
  
"Come on, come on, you gotta try this," I said to him, my hand flat against my stomach as I glided over my carpet on bare feet. He laughed as if that reached right into his guts and tickled them. His hair was a mess, everywhere, in his face. So was mine. Kaz sat still, watching us passively, a chimney.  
  
"I've danced before," Hyde told me as if I didn't know, but he had slid himself off the table anyway, approaching me with a look of hesitant hilarity. "You're crazy. Give me my cell phone so I can take a picture." I'd taken it away from him earlier because I hated how often he checked his text messages.  
  
"Dance with me," I suggested with gusto, taking one of his hands before his answer could be formed, my other arm looping around his waist. I could hear the pipe being tossed someplace upon the carpet by Kaz, and Hyde's incredulous laughter was like a buzzsaw in my ears. I wanted to rip him off of his feet and see what he would do, make him react, make him melt out of the composure that seemed welded in place. He only laughed at me as Kaz watched us from the floor, me guiding Hyde around in a haphazard waltz that led nowhere.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"You're not taking my advice," Gackt said to me in the way people only do over a phone. It's because you can't reach out and deck them for having that pretentious tone of voice.  
  
"What advice?" I was playing dumb, sure, but sometimes it was better to bait him. I got a kick out of it because it always pissed him off.  
  
"You wait, you'll see. The closer you get, the less you know, the more you want to."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
From then on I would dance onstage, freer than a bird, loose swaying of my hips and long watery movements of my arms. Music filled my ears, VAMPS music, his throaty rough voice guiding me around on light feet as my fingers plucked and picked out beats he'd penned but I'd improved upon. There were those points where I felt victorious because he'd lift his head and catch me in my personal utopia, body swaying, and he'd smile that smile and laugh a soundless laugh lost in the rhythm the three of us made.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk," Hyde's voice whispered its accusation at me, head bowed because my mouth was locked down on his throat. I grunted a noise of protest or disagreement, my arm tightening from where it was snaked around his waist, pinning him against the wall of my hotel room suite in Fukuoka. We'd run out of pot two stops back, so the Jack Daniels bottle lay empty on the nightstand, a poor substitute. It was the first time, the only time, that I got Hyde alone on that tour. Kaz had made a promise to somebody -- some nobody -- that he'd meet them that night while he was in town. Somebody from the old days, somebody I didn't give a rat's ass about because my head was swimming in burning hot alcohol waves and Hyde's skin was so fucking soft and tasted way better than the whiskey. His hands didn't touch me, they were flat over the wall at his sides, and I could feel the heat coming off of him and I wanted to tear him apart.  
  
" _You're_  drunk," I countered, moving aside curls of his hair, which felt thinner than it looked. I wanted to see his face, to see what might be moving inside his eyes but he only regarded me with solid obsidian, his cheeks flush but his breathing even.  
  
"Not even close."  
  
I laughed and leaned in for a kiss but he turned his face away. I growled, I bit him where his heart beat in his neck. He jerked so I eased the weight of my taller body against him and slipped my knee between his thighs. He was so still, like an insect poised, listening to the weather for the threat of rain. I felt a knot of frustration tightening in my chest but decided that a jokester could make anything break.  
  
"I can't be that bad a kisser," I said, sliding a hand up to push beneath the thin material of his shirt with intent to find one of those barbells in his chest.  
  
"Not bad."  
  
"Maybe you could teach me a few things." My thumb and forefinger carefully rolled the metal and his face flickered with the first sign of pleasure, allowing me to feel a stab of triumph. He didn't answer me. He didn't tell me to stop, so I leaned in again and this time he turned his face  _toward_  and right before our lips connected I thought I saw a flash of what most people call anger in his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"You don't know the first thing about him." It was a solemn sentence, and one of the few Kaz had ever directed to me that wasn't about work. I paused from where I'd been packing my bass away, practice having been over for about five minutes. Licking my lips, I straightened myself to my full height, slinging my case over my shoulder and gave him the biggest, warmest smile I could muster. Liar, liar.  
  
"What do you mean? Who?"  
  
Kaz's eyes flicked to where Hyde was standing on the terrace, talking into his cell phone with one hand, a cigar burning in the other. When he moved to tap his ash over the railing, one of the bruises I'd bestowed upon him the night before stood livid on his skin when his hair shifted. I couldn't tell if he was pissed off or just disappointed. Kaz's face might as well've been made of granite for all the clues it gave me.  
  
To my surprise, he didn't say anything more. He picked up his own equipment and walked away from me, but he made a point of making sure to give Hyde a fraternal one-armed squeeze before departing.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Kiss me," I said to Hyde while he was below me, my body poised over and against his, my hand curled cruelly around his hip, surely leaving a series of marks the size and shape of my fingertips. My lips were swollen, his throat a horrific mess of bruises and livid red space blooming up on his skin. Our shirts were off -- my handiwork -- and the denim of his jeans and mine made rough noises as I ground down against him. He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, an unkind smile curving his lips. I dug my nails in to make him hiss.  
  
He never did. Not after that first time, that first time with the Jack Daniels and the empty bed and the weather turning ugly outside. My fixation, how much I wanted it all. Something he would never give. Just like with everything else.  
  
"I don't think I can teach you anything else." The truth was unspoken. He didn't want to. Not with his kiss, not with anything.  
  
I left him by himself in his room that night but I knew I was the only one who felt alone.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"You should have listened to me."  
  
"Do me a favor, Gackt. Shut the fuck up."  
  
"I feel sorry for you. But I guess that means I feel sorry for myself, too."  
  
"I figured."  
  
"I told you not to get too close."  
  
"Nobody's close. Nobody ever will be."  
  
"You sound so sure."  
  
"I'm not."  
  
It was then that I understood Kaz, his silence, his wordless age. Why he stayed close to Hyde but didn't seem to at the same time. Out of everyone, maybe he understood what made a person move. You can't reach for a dancing flame. It's beautiful, but you'll never hold it in your hands. Just keep watching it, content yourself with that.  
  
If you somehow manage to touch it? All you get is a burn.  
  
END  
  
  
---


End file.
